He used, and still uses, filing cards in the classic, pre-computer method of compiling dictionaries.Perhaps that helps to explain his extraordinary success in compiling his dictionary almost single-handedly.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, September 17, 2005
Computer Avoidance
From the introduction to Hugh Rawson's interview with lexicographer J.E. Lighter, author of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang: